Hide-and-Seek
by Nonsuch
Summary: An innocent game of hide-and-seek between Sarah and Toby takes an unusual turn when Sarah is presented with a strangely convenient hiding place. The Goblin King is, after all, nothing if not generous.


**A/N: This story occupies the same universe as _The House on the Hill_, another of my _Labyrinth_ stories; feel free to read that first, but it's not at all necessary. **

**.**

**.**

**.**

Hide-and-Seek

While I liked returning home for many reasons, my brother was top of the list. I rang him every Thursday evening from college before he went to bed, and we managed to have rather splendid conversations. Toby was a clever kid, and new thoughts and tangents came to him at an astonishing rate; I remember one conversation that covered everything from Jupiter's moons to the hibernation patterns of tortoises. While the conversations were often delightful in their sheer unpredictability, they couldn't compare to pulling up in my parent's drive in my beaten-up Honda Civic to find Toby waiting for me at the window. He would race out, and was always in my arms the moment I opened the car door. As he got older, he became more bashful and would pretend disinterest; his pretence didn't bother in the slightest, though, since he never stopped running out to meet me.

Ever since he'd been a toddler, Toby had had a mildly exasperating obsession with hide-and-seek. Starting when he wa_s really_ little he would hide constantly regardless of who could see him or where he was; a favourite hiding spot happened to be under my bed covers, so I gave up on making my bed entirely in my senior year of high school. It wasn't worth it when Toby would only barrel in and burrow under my accumulated quilts and blankets. I've forgotten how many times I must have made a loud, protracted speech about my vanished brother, checking the laundry basket and yanking out my drawers, as a Toby-shaped lump quivered from mock fear in my bed.

When he got slightly older, Toby realized that the true pleasure of hide-and-seek lies in protracting the seeking. For that, one needs to disappear. Much to Irene's disapproval, Toby became a master at this. He would disappear just when he was wanted, and once managed to evade three successive haircuts by hiding in the back of the linen closest. He was never found, only emerging when hunger made being vanished impractical (immensely proud of this accomplishment, he related it to me in a whisper while his mom was out of the room).

For spring break in my junior year of college, I did what I always did and travelled 250 miles home. My college friends liked to tease me about my fealty to my family, but I would just smile. If anyone had a reason to value familial ties, it was me. Besides, I didn't find the beach had the same novelty it possessed for Heidi from Missouri.

Almost as soon as I'd got through the front door, Toby was begging me to go outside with him. Unsurprisingly, he wanted to play hide-and-seek.

"Toby!" Irene scolded, putting the kettle on the stove. "Your sister's spent the last five hours driving from Washington. The last thing she wants to do is to play hide-and-seek with you."

"But Mom!"

Before Irene could say anything back, I put up a hand. "Don't worry Irene, it's fine. Just let me have my tea, Tobes—we can go out then."

Irene glared at Toby, but said nothing more. I winked at my brother, and he beamed and launched into a breathless infomercial on velociraptors.

Half an hour later, we were in the woods. Unusually for him, Toby had decided he wanted to be the seeker. As a result, I was sent off running through the trees to hide myself. "And you better hide yourself _really_ well. It's no fun if you don't try."

"You don't need to tell me that! I'm second only to you when it comes to mastery of hiding." And with that, I was off. Although it was nominally spring, it didn't feel like it. The trees remained bare and the ground was carpeted by brittle twigs and the powdered remnants of old leaves. The wood wasn't particularly thick, and when I looked back over my shoulder I could see Toby counting, his hands over his eyes as he chanted number after number. I graduated from a jog to a run, veering off at a sharp angle in the hope of finding some cover. I hadn't thought to ask Toby why the game had to be played in the woods, and now we were there it seemed like a strange place for him to choose. Toby loved facts and figures, logic—he should have known the woods wouldn't be any fun for hide-and-seek in March.

Almost as soon as that thought entered my head, I came across a truly monstrous tree. Monstrous is the only word apt for it. It was huge and twisted, and seemed impossibly ancient for such a young wood; its spindly upper branches were broken and hanging by threads of bark, and its trunk was completely covered with knots of ivy.

A call sounded behind me. "Coming, ready or not!"

I looked around, but could see nowhere to hide—I was completely exposed. Toby would find me in seconds. Just as I was preparing to disappoint him, I noticed that the ivy didn't quite cover every part of the strange tree—there was an opening, and when I reached my hand through, I found a large, dry hollow. With one quick look back over my shoulder, I pushed the ivy aside and climbed in. As soon as I had pulled my legs through, I pulled the leaves back over the hollow.

I had just about enough light to check my watch, and resolved to give it five minutes. I didn't doubt that Toby would find me—the wood was too sparse and my hollow tree too obvious a hiding spot for me to disappear thoroughly. Nonetheless, I was pleased with myself; I could hardly have stumbled across it at a better time. It was convenient. Almost_ too_ convenient.

I started to pay more attention to my immediate surroundings. The hollow was even larger than it had first seemed, and it wasn't rough at all—inside, the wood felt smooth and soft, almost curving to suit the slope of my body. While the tree was large, it should have been cramped for me. The bark should have been sharp and dug into my skin, but no, it was comfortable. And I didn't like it in the slightest.

Now, I had had experience with supernatural intervention in my life on several prior occasions. From those occasions, I knew that one's sensitivity to magic increases as soon as you become aware that you are, in fact, surrounded by it. With my senses sharpened, I could feel it bristling in the air, sharpening the chill and softening the tree bark. And I could hear footsteps that didn't belong to a little boy. Leaves were crunching, and I tensed when a new sing-song voice called out to me. "Coming, ready or not." There was no boyish excitement in this new voice. No, this was a taunt.

I was conflicted—how could I not be conflicted? One part of me itched to run back home as fast as I could. Another part of me wanted to stay hidden, and emerge only when that hateful, entitled voice had gone. But the prevailing part of me knew I had to leave the tree to find Toby; more than anything else, I had to be certain my brother was safe.

And Toby aside, I couldn't pretend that dread was the sole feeling provoked by the Goblin King's voice.

I reached out to pull back the ivy, but found it moved back for me by itself before I could touch it. I watched with a face like thunder as the leaves parted, revealing the Goblin King, his head bent to peer in at me. "Now, that was no fun, was it?" he said, sounding genuinely disappointed. He held out a hand. "But please, allow me."

I briefly contemplated ignoring the offer—I was still shaking, half from anger, and half from the thrill—but thought better of it. The last thing I wanted was to be dealing with an angry Goblin King, particularly because I didn't like the edge to his temper I had seen on our previous encounters. I took his hand and he helped me down. Once on my feet, I pointedly set about brushing stray leaves from my hair.

I dispensed with any pleasantries. "Where's Toby?"

"Looking for you. You chose your hiding place well."

"If he was looking for me, I'd hear him."

"He is calling out as we speak. It's simply that his voice can't quite reach us here."

I looked around. The forest was unchanged except the strange sensation of magic fizzing in the air. "But we're still in the woods. He can't have gone that far."

"He's not the one who travelled. There is more to that tree than there first appears."

"If it's not what it seems, what is it?"

"A present—you wanted to hide, didn't you? What better a hiding place than another dimension? I thought it quite generous, really."

"It's not a gift I asked for, Goblin King. But I'm not going to ask you to undo what's already been done, so let's handle this logically. This is the woods, but they're not the same woods where Toby is. We're in the same place as him, but we're in a different aspect of it. Right?"

"Precisely. You're very quick today. But now that tiresome process of discovery is over, I must ask: How have you been? It's been far too long."

I made a conscious effort to be pleasant, which lent an odd stiltedness to my voice. My natural mode with the Goblin King was sniping superiority. "Very well, thank you. At college, studying drama. I read _The Changeling_ after we last met, and you were right; it was a bore." He listened to this quite fervently, and I wondered how attentively he'd listen if I were to plunge into a proper, in-depth account of my activities since my encounter with his house. I feared that he'd probably be far more interested than he should have been. "Now, I know you're just trying to do me a favour, but I'd quite like to go back to my brother now. The game stops being fun if the person who's hiding can't be found, you know."

He tossed his head in a petulant manner normally seen on teenage girls with great manes of golden hair, folding his arms. "You really need to relax, dear. Do you have any idea what others would give to experience the world as you do? To feel magic coursing through the air around them? I have known men kill in attempts to be closer to my world, yet you scorn it time and time again. Need I remind you what I can offer?"

Before I could say a word in reply he flung an arm out, and with that gesture colours started to run through the sky like many dyes swirling together in a pool. They streaked it with all shades—amber, green, orange, red, blue—and the strange lights of the sky filtered the light that come down to the woods, turning the trees emerald and the ground a brilliant crimson. I could feel magic surging around me like a vicious wind, and gazed at my hands as the colours of them seemed to shift and shimmer with the seconds. It was beauty beyond beauty, vivid to the point that I could feel myself trembling.

When I finally spoke, my voice was very small. Although there were no discernible sounds around us, I was surprised that he heard me. "Please, stop it."

With another gesture, a brusque, harsh swipe of his arm, the lights vanished. The sky was white again and the air was cold, colder than was natural. The woods—which had shimmered, near transcendent—now seemed dim and skeletal. My eyes were still dazzled, stray patches of colour swirling and leaping about before them. The Goblin King was a born tempter, and I hated how easily he could provoke awe and wonder in me—how he blinded me.

Before he could tempt or tease any further, I spoke. "Look, I get it: it's incredible. What you can do is incredible. It's just that I can't be here right now. I need to be with my brother, my family. You know that—you ought to anyway, given how you seem to follow me everywhere."

"Tobias is enjoying the hunt for you. Your father doesn't know you're out of the house. Your step-mother is glad to have some time to herself. Where's the harm in staying a little longer? Ask anything of me, and I can make it so."

I looked at him carefully, and was surprised by what I saw—especially so soon after his fireworks display. His face was wild looking, exactly as the face of a Goblin King ought to look. Yet despite that there was something curiously young about it. Earnest, even. For the first time, it struck me as odd that a creature with infinite power could stoop to begging for the company of a college student. I suppose I didn't realise the strangeness of it as a teenager because, at fifteen, and even at eighteen, it had seemed perfectly logical to me that a mighty king would crave the company of the talented and noble Sarah Williams. Only now, with an asshole ex-boyfriend and a smattering of broken friendships behind me, did I fully appreciate that the world was not, despite my earlier presumptions, tailored to my ego. That knowledge made the earnestness on the Goblin King's face positively gratifying. It didn't hurt that we were on my childhood territory, stood amongst the trees—or the shades of trees, at least—that I had climbed and carved poor poems into on dull summer days. While I could still be awed by his power, I couldn't be overwhelmed by it; not where I had such a strong footing. Not when I knew that I had power of my own.

"I can ask for anything, and you'll make it happen? No questions?"

"Anything but my absence."

I smiled, and without much thought I moved towards him, rose onto my toes and whispered my request in his ear. I moved back as quickly as I had moved towards him, and studied his face. His eyebrow quirked. "You truly mean this evening?"

"If you don't have anything better to do, of course."

He simply stared at me now, taken aback as the reality of what I'd asked sunk in. I had to suppress an urge to laugh. I felt slightly giddy, but I was more conscious of my daring than my foolishness.

"Well?" I said, a little impatient. "How do I get back? I'll have to get ready first."

There was a slight pause as he processed this, a question that he would have undoubtedly taken great pleasure in deflecting earlier in our conversation. "The tree," he said, sounding deliciously dazed. "Go back into the tree and listen. You'll know when to leave it."

"Thanks. That wasn't so hard, was it? See you later."

He didn't reply to that, merely staring. I climbed into the tree without another word, drawing the ivy over the opening so I could close my eyes and focus on listening. At first I could still sense the magic, hear it surging around me like a wind; I almost felt a pang of loss when the wind died down, but any regret was replaced by exhilaration when I heard Toby's voice calling: "Coming, ready or not!"

I could sense the tread of Toby's feet, and could hear him getting closer. He wouldn't feel satisfied unless he found me, and I wouldn't hear the end of it if I gave up and forced a hug on him. This realisation gave me a new appreciation for the comfort of my hiding spot, and I made a note to thank the Goblin King for being so thoughtful.

Toby's feet came closer and closer, his call louder. I tensed, feeling perfectly ready to be found. Only when a small hand rushed out and grabbed my wrist did I squeal, my heart pounding. Maybe I hadn't been quite as ready as I'd first thought.

"TOBY! You frightened the life out of me," I scolded, climbing out and feeling immensely relieved to find myself looking down at my very real brother. The bitter cold had gone, replaced by the mild ambience I was used to.

"Mission accomplished!" proclaimed Toby cheerfully. "Scaring you was the point." He looked past me, tilting his head slightly to gawp at the tree. "This is a _great_ hiding place. Where did it come from? It wasn't here yesterday."

I bent down so my mouth hovered by his ear, casting my eyes nervously over the woods before speaking, "Maybe they're multiplying!"

Toby giggled, and with that the matter was settled. After three more rounds of hide-and-seek, I called time. "But we're having so much fun!" protested Toby, kicking a liberal amount of dust and dirt into the air. "Why go back now?"

"I have to get ready for something. But there's always tomorrow, right? I'm here for three weeks. That leaves plenty of time for games."

Although not quite sold, Toby appeared to accept this. Before he could mull it over, I launched into a run in the direction of home. "You just try and catch me!"

If I'd known how my dinner date with the Goblin King was going to go, I would have saved my energy and walked. God knows I _needed_ that energy.

**.**

**.**

**.**

**A/N: Many thanks to NiennaTelrynya for the beta of this! I do aim to continue this but am not sure when - the more reviews/favourites/alerts I get, the more inspired I'll be to update sooner!**

**I hope you like this! Do leave a review with your thoughts.**


End file.
